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Usability challenges in an Ethiopian software development organization
Abstract
Usability and user centered design (UCD) are central to software
development. In developing countries, the gap between IT
development and the local use situation is larger than in western
countries. However, usability is neither well addressed in software
practice nor at the policy making level in Ethiopia. Software
practitioners focus on functional requirements, meeting deadlines
and budget. The software development industry in Ethiopia is in
its early stage. The article aims at understanding usability
practices in an Ethiopian software development company.
Developers, system analysts, product owners and users were
studied. In this first phase of the research, participatory
observation, a workshop and interviews with practitioners and
operational staff were analyzed. Informal discussions have been
observed to outweigh formal meetings for sharing experience and
ideas. Practitioners’ internal configuration, their experience,
cultural knowledge and common sense regarding the users’
situation guided the design. Prototypes and fast delivery of
working versions helped in getting user feedback even if early
user focus proved to be a challenge as communication between
developers and users suffered from several layers of indirection.
Further challenges are the heterogeneity of users to be supported,
a lack of awareness of usability methods, and lacking resources.
... The impact of digital divide is not only limited to the one existing between developing and developed economies but it also includes the differences in the rural and urban areas within the same nation. In developing economies ICT services in many cases are leapfrogging paper-based administration [3]. Especially in rural areas, part of the population is illiterate or semi-literate and does not understand the advantages of ICT services. ...
... Agile software development methods are iterative and incremental software engineering methods that aim at working software, customer collaboration, flexible to change of requirements even late in development and fast delivery of prototypes to meet marketing requirements. Agile software development methods are adapted and used in the developing economies as they provide flexibility to accommodate changing scope and funding [3][4]. Due to lack of experience and skills, users cannot articulate the requirement of future products from abstract interfaces [1], and hence the flexibility of agile methods bring potential benefit in these areas. ...
... The research resulted from participatory observation from the first phase of proj. A are published [3]. The project in Org. ...
User-centered design (UCD) 1 addresses the design of interactive systems placing the users in the center of the design with the aim of improving usability and user experience. Developing economies are in dear need of UCD; low IT literacy, low infrastructure and funds; and heterogeneity in culture and livelihood result in special requirements on usability in order to harvest the possible benefits of IT. Traditional UCD methods, however, are often regarded as heavyweight and expensive. Agile software development methods are lightweight , flexible and iterative in order to accommodate the changing requirements and unsure funding and are therefore important for IT companies in developing economies. Can we adjust UCD methods to fit the need of developing economies and with agile development while taking advantage of the iterative character of agile development methods? The research appropriated an action research approach called Cooperative Method Development (CMD). Based on the empirical investigation, UCD challenges were identified, innovative use of lightweight UCD methods was deliberated and implemented. The improvements include: working with local IT personnel, lightweight and incremental use of personas, support departments performing acceptance testing on release versions, culturally adapted user testing in pairs and heuristic evaluation as adapted UCD practices. The evaluation together with the involved practitioners shows improvements in the development process including reduced reworks; satisfied users; better collaboration with stakeholders; and a close understanding of users and their needs. The evaluation of the resulting integrated approach with the involved practitioners as well as software engineers not involved in the research indicates that the results are transferable to similar contexts. 1
... For interactive systems, usability is utterly important. In developing countries where ICT services are limited, in many cases IT services are leapfrogging paper-based administration [5]. home of over 80 ethnic groups who have their own language and culture. ...
... The usability challenges identified in earlier works [5] [11], such as lack of usability professionals, lack of funds, less IT skills, user resistance and others like cultural constraints led to think how can UCD and usability methods and tools be introduced and integrated into a team with basic knowledge of usability but with no usability specialist and find a lightweight and systematic way for embedding usability evaluation in the development process. ...
... B of org. A and the Scrum process tailored to the internal practice in the case organizations is reported in the articles [5] [27]. Here in this paper the focus will be made to proj. ...
... Addressing usefulness and usability of software systems is of core importance to the people in such context. Ethiopia is here no exception (Teka et al., 2016). ...
... Organizational and project specific practices of testing, quality assurance, requirements development and related practices need to be understood and communicated to inform the proposition and development of methods, concretizing practice. As such software development is a social and epistemic practice and software development method is a practice pattern that should be related and integrated in an existing development practice (Dittrich, 2016). ...
... Future Work. The survey presented here was implemented in the context of a PhD project on including UCD in agile development in Ethiopia (see also (Teka et al., 2016)). The article (Teka et al., 2016) is based on an initial case to take measures and solutions for the usability challenges resulted here as well as the detail findings of the case. ...
Usability is central especially in contexts with highly heterogeneous user groups as it is the case in developing countries. User involvement and participation has positive impacts towards developing usable software and system success and it is one of the core principles in user centered design (UCD). But how does the industry in developing countries work with UCD and usability evaluation? The article reports from a survey on usability evaluation and UCD practices in Ethiopian software organizations. It aims at exploring the practice of usability evaluation, user involvement and participation in the software organizations in Ethiopia. Some part of the survey question is adapted from a previously conducted survey in Italy and Denmark and further expanded with a set of questions referring to user involvement and participation. The survey was triangulated with interviews with a subset of the respondents. The results show that the percentage of organizations performing some form of usability evaluation is low in Ethiopia. The challenges of usability evaluation observed in the study was analyzed with respect to the challenges of 'digital divide' against the publicly available methods and practices and among developed and developing nations using real access/ real impact criteria. The result shows that there are some unique challenges of usability not discussed in the literature reviewed in any detail such as less IT skills, lack of trained professionals, and lack of awareness. The result for user involvement shows also some unique challenges: lack of user motivation, acceptance of change and cultural influence. However, more than 80% of the surveyed organizations claim involving users in some kind in product development. The implications of these findings with respect to the need to contextualize UCD and usability methods are discussed.
... Software developers need to be supported to understand users and their requirements. Developers indeed require a means to support them to clearly understand user needs [3], long chain of user representations and the different personnel talking about users differently were among the challenges mentioned at the usability workshops in the case organization. ...
... The Scrum ceremonies include: product planning meeting, standup meeting, sprint review meeting and sprint retrospectives. Further details of the in-house Scrum practice can be found [3]. Figure 2 shows the in-house Scrum process in the case company. ...
... The CMD phase 1 of proj. A (understanding the practice) has been detailed in the article [3]. CMD phase 1 of proj.A, understanding the software development and usability practices and challenges brought important input to the deliberation procedures in the next phase of the research. ...
User centered design (UCD) provides principles and activities for improving usability. However, traditional UCD methods lack considering the context of users in low income, culturally diverse settings and where Information and Communication Technology (ICT) development is at its infant stage. Software development in low and medium income countries like Ethiopia is characterized by big difference in education and livelihood. Heterogeneous cultures both between different ethnic groups and between rural and urban contexts is another challenge for Ethiopian software development. The paper addresses how to adapt UCD methods and agile development to bridge these heterogeneities. To this end, a multi-case study was implemented, researching two projects in an Ethiopian software company. An action research approach has been complemented by a survey and interviews with other companies. It has resulted in contextualization of UCD practices: personas mediated between rural and urban users and developers. Personas helped also customer representatives as well as product owners to understand users and their requirements and allowed to test releases against persona requirements before deployment. Personas were updated throughout the project based on usability testing and experience from early deployment. Besides personas local IT personnel mediated between the rural users and software developers. Pairwise usability testing is an example for cultural adaptation for discount usability evaluation method that has been tried out. Releasing early version to support personnel and members of the company who are closer to the intended users helped to provide a more adapted version from the start.
... Recent literature has recognized that existing software engineering (SE) processes, methods and practice are not suitable for the direct application in emerging countries [8]. Reports from Ethiopia [9], Iran [10], Serbia [11], and Sub-Saharan Africa [12] highlight different problems that affect the success of software development industry in these countries; in particular they mention low infrastructure [9,12], lack of financial resources [10,11], and social and environmental factors [12]. We can see that most of the reported problems are similar to those we uncovered in this paper. ...
... Recent literature has recognized that existing software engineering (SE) processes, methods and practice are not suitable for the direct application in emerging countries [8]. Reports from Ethiopia [9], Iran [10], Serbia [11], and Sub-Saharan Africa [12] highlight different problems that affect the success of software development industry in these countries; in particular they mention low infrastructure [9,12], lack of financial resources [10,11], and social and environmental factors [12]. We can see that most of the reported problems are similar to those we uncovered in this paper. ...
Software plays a central role in modern societies, with its high economic value and potential for advancing societal change. In this paper, we characterise challenges and opportunities for a country progressing towards entering the global software industry, focusing on Papua New Guinea (PNG). By hosting a Software Engineering workshop, we conducted a qualitative study by recording talks (n=3), employing a questionnaire (n=52), and administering an in-depth focus group session with local actors (n=5). Based on a thematic analysis, we identified challenges as barriers and opportunities for the PNG software engineering community. We also discuss the state of practices and how to make it inclusive for practitioners, researchers, and educators from both the local and global software engineering community
... There are several studies reporting the deficiencies in emerging countries, in different continents. In a study aiming to analyze a case of a Human-Computer Interaction in an Ethiopian organization, Teka et al. [31] summarizes the landscape of software development industry in the emerging countries. They reported that the industry is usually affected by low infrastructure, lack of manpower and technical problems or knowledge. ...
... Some of the studies also report how to act in order to strengthen the software and the Information Technology industry in a way to benefit these countries. An important point highlighted in some studies is that there are special requirements that should be taken into consideration when dealing with developing (and undeveloped) countries: sustainability, affordability, socioeconomic justification and community participation [22,31]. Khaksar and Khaksar [18] proposes the creation of financial and intellectual support from the government to facilitate the growth of the industry. ...
Technological advancement is a main driver for societal change. The Papua New Guinean (PNG) society is currently undergoing technological, economic, and social transformations, with first signs indicating the development of a local software engineering community. To characterise challenges and opportunities associated with a country's progress toward becoming a member of the global software engineering community, we set out to explore the situation in PNG. To this end, we organised a local software engineering workshop and invited students, educators and industry experts to participate. Besides collecting data by distributing a questionnaire (n=52) and by recording talks (n=3) during the workshop, we conducted an in-depth focus group session with local actors (n=5). Based on a thematic analysis of the resulting qualitative data, we present five themes that capture challenges and opportunities for PNG software engineers. We further discuss local implications for emerging societies such as PNG and global implications for software engineering in general.
... Future Work. The survey presented here was implemented in the context of a PhD project on including user-centered design in agile development in Ethiopia (see also (Teka, Dittrich, & Kifle, 2016)). The article (Teka et al., 2016) is based on an initial case to take measures and solutions for the usability challenges resulted here as well as the detail findings of the case. ...
... The survey presented here was implemented in the context of a PhD project on including user-centered design in agile development in Ethiopia (see also (Teka, Dittrich, & Kifle, 2016)). The article (Teka et al., 2016) is based on an initial case to take measures and solutions for the usability challenges resulted here as well as the detail findings of the case. (May select more than one answer) □ Users take too much time in learning the product □ Low IT skill level of users □ Users are not motivated □ User frustrations □ Others, pleases specify:____________________________________________________ Thank you, for the time dedicated to completing the questionnaire and best regards. ...
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is central for economic development; and usability is central for the functioning of ICT especially in context with highly heterogeneous user groups like developing countries. But how does industry in developing countries work with usability and usability evaluation? The paper reports from a survey on usability evaluation practices in Ethiopian software companies. The survey question is adapted from a previously conducted survey in Italy and Denmark and further expanded with a set of questions on user involvement and participation. The survey was triangulated with interviews with a subset of the respondents. The results show that the percentage of organizations performing some form of usability evaluation is lower in Ethiopia compared to the two earlier studies. The differences on the challenges of usability evaluation between this study and the two earlier studies have been analysed with respect to the challenges of ‘digital divide’ among the developed and developing nations using real access/ real impact criteria. Surprisingly though, more than 80% of the surveyed companies involve users in some kind in product development. The implications of these findings with respect to the need to contextualize usability methods are discussed.
http://www.icit4ad.cm/images/Usability%20Evaluation%20in%20Ethiopian%20Software%20Organizations.pdf
... Blake and Tucker (2006) explored software engineering and methodological development issues concerning three case studies from South Africa and presented a software engineering approach for these situations. Teka et al. (2016) focus on usability and user-centered design (UCD) in developing countries, in particular, in a private Ethiopian software development company. They report that most of the software companies in Ethiopia are young and inexperienced. ...
Readiness for the adoption of Automated Software Engineering (ASE) tools and techniques can vary according to the size and maturity of software companies. ASE tools and techniques have been adopted by large or ultra-large software companies. However, little is known about the adoption of ASE tools and techniques in small and medium-sized software enterprises (SSMEs) in emerging countries, and the challenges faced by such companies. We study the adoption of ASE tools and techniques for software measurement, static code analysis, continuous integration, and software testing, and the respective challenges faced by software developers in Thailand, a developing country with a growing software economy which mainly consists of SSMEs (similar to other developing countries). Based on the answers from 103 Thai participants in an online survey, we found that Thai software developers are somewhat familiar with ASE tools and agree that adopting such tools would be beneficial. Most of the developers do not use software measurement or static code analysis tools due to a lack of knowledge or experience but agree that their use would be useful. Continuous integration tools have been used with some difficulties. Lastly, although automated testing tools are adopted despite several serious challenges, many developers are still testing the software manually. We call for improvements in ASE tools to be easier to use in order to lower the barrier to adoption in small and medium-sized software enterprises (SSMEs) in developing countries.
... Which There are many well-organized private and public limited companies in Ethiopia. However, construction companies 111 are not well organized and simply place a forename compared to the other business companies in the past few years 112 [11]. At present, these construction companies are developing construction and services for different organizations or 113 enterprises. ...
Construction managers that are conversant with project management knowledge areas handle the construction project. Intelligent means discerning or looking about, and these construction managers are well-versed in their fields. However, the majority of construction projects in construction companies fail around the world, particularly in low-income countries such as Ethiopia, due to a lack of construction project managers who are unfamiliar with contract management that are used without considering the company's situations and project contexts. The goal of this research is to create a machine-learning-based prediction model for finding the most effective contract type in construction companies. Data from Ethiopian construction enterprises and associations (particularly from the Amhara National Regional State Job & Training Bureau and its branches in Addis Zemen, Woreta, and Debre Tabor) were collected using a purposeful sample strategy. Support vector machines scored 93 %, decision trees scored 92.30 %, and K-nearest neighbors scored 91.20 %, and logistic regression scored 88 % on the testing data set, respectively. Furthermore, in comparison to the other classifiers, Support vector machines outperformed the best in the experiments. The study suggests gathering more building project datasets from construction businesses and comparing them to our findings to determine the most effective contract type.
... UCD is a well-established software development methodology in industrialized countries, but it is even more important in developing countries, where the gap between software development and the local use situation is larger than in western countries [2]. This gap is larger still in rural areas, where even the basic conditions expected in industrialized countries cannot be met. ...
... Contextual issues Studies SM06 and SM10 reported some contextual challenges for usability works in developing countries. Mentions were made of software development companies in Nigeria (SM06) and Ethiopia (SM10). Specific mentions were made of heterogeneity of users, developers' lack of familiarity with usability methods. ...
Human–computer interaction (HCI) practice has emerged as a research domain in the HCI field and is growing. The need to transfer HCI practices to the industry began significantly with the works of Nielsen on usability engineering. To date, methods and techniques for designing, evaluating, and implementing interactive systems for human use have continued to emerge. It is, therefore, justified to conduct a systematic mapping study to determine the landscape of HCI practice research. A Systematic Mapping Study method was used to map 142 studies according to research type, topic, and contribution. These were then analyzed to determine an overview of HCI practice research. The objective was to analyze studies on HCI practice and present prominent issues that characterize the HCI practice research landscape. Second, to identify pressing challenges regarding HCI practices in software/systems development companies. The results show that HCI practice research has steadily increased since 2012. The majority of the studies explored focused on evaluation research that largely contributed to the evaluation methods or processes. Most of the studies were on design tools and techniques, design methods and contexts, design work and organizational culture, and collaboration and team communication. Interviews, case studies, and survey methods have been prominently used as research methods. HCI techniques are mostly used during the initial phase of development and during evaluation. HCI practice challenges in companies are mostly process-related and on performance of usability and user experience activities. The major challenge seems to be to find a way to collect and incorporate user feedback in a timely manner, especially in agile processes. There are areas identified in this study as needing more research.
... From our own experience, small and medium companies feel more at home when they can continuously assess their processes and enhance their knowledge capacity building. Our argument is that as HCI practice is still at an infancy stage (due to low awareness and knowledge of HCI approaches, and other contextual issues) in many development companies found in developing countries (Ogunyemi et al., 2015;Teka et al., 2016), it could be worthwhile to support this set of companies with continuous representation models to assess and improve their HCI practices such as the HCD. Our assertion is consistent with a recent finding, which 'concluded 7 Available at www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-maturity-stages-1-4 ...
It is commonly believed that human-centred design (HCD) approach is very beneficial to interactive systems development. However, not much is known about the state of HCD practice in developing countries, especially the sub-Saharan Africa. This paper explores the state of HCD practice in three Nigerian software companies. We used the interview technique to explore two key issues. First, the perception of humans as a component of sociotechnical systems, and second, how HCD process is being approached in software companies. A cross-case analysis of the three companies was performed and the usability maturity model-human-centredness scale was used to determine the state of maturity of the three companies. The outcomes of this study reveal that HCD practice is currently at the least stage of maturity in the three companies and user involvement is not practiced in the right manner. The outcomes of the study suggest the need for reflective HCD practice and localizing human–computer interaction approaches to contexts.
Agile practices are release planning, sprint planning, and standup meetings. The Agile provides the requisite time and space for teams, enabling them, to collaborate with each other and build relationship among them. Frequent short meetings are being held daily by Agile teams to identify potential collaboration opportunities to be followed. User Centered Design (UCD) is a user interface design process which lays great emphasis on the usability objectives, user features, environmental circumstances, tasks and work input/flow in the design/model of an interface. However, some challenges occurred when the UCD joins the Agile process such as usability issues, collaboration problems, usability testing etc. The proposed model not only embraces the relevant issues but it resolves the same to a great extent. The evaluation of said model is done through a case study.
ISO 9241-11 and ISO 13407 are two important standards related to usability: the former one provides the definition of usability and the latter one guidance for designing usability. We carried out an interpretative analysis of ISO 13407 from the viewpoint of the standard definition of usability from ISO 9241-11. The results show that ISO 13407 provides only partly guidance for designing usability as presumed by the definition. Guidance for describing users and environments are provided but very limited guidance is provided for the descriptions of user goals and usability measures, and generally for the process of producing the various outcomes.
Agile development processes and User Centred Design (UCD) integration have been gaining increased interest, in part due to the complementarity of the techniques, the benefits each can apply to the other, and the challenges associated with their combination. This paper describes a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) that was conducted on Agile and UCD integration. The aim of this SLR was to identify various challenging factors that restrict Agile and User Centred Design Integration (AUCDI) and explore the proposed practices to deal with them. The study included a total of 71 papers and excluded 80 papers published from the year 2000 till 2012. AUCDI challenges and their respective proposed practices and success factors were synthesized. A description and taxonomy of AUCDI challenges and its respective success factors and practices were reported. Practitioners can utilise the results in identifying potential AUCDI challenges and practices or success factors to deal with them.
Through our research and collaborations with usability practitioners and HCI researchers funded by European Union projects in India and China, together with other interactions, we have previously proposed a model for the global institutionalisation and localisation of HCI and usability practice. The model envisages three elements: the redefinition of HCI in the local culture, the embedding of HCI in local national organizations and the consequential roll-out of localized HCI practices. In this paper we represent the model and discuss detailed issues that will support its implementation. In particular we provide a critical review of the literature on culture, specifically with reference to its use within HCI. The issue is not to attempt to enforce some canonical form, but rather to highlight some of the ongoing controversies about some of the concepts and methods currently being employed in the field. Following this we explore issues relating to both whole life cycle issues of user centred design and the more specific issue of user based evaluation. In relation to user centred design we debate how best to involve clients and users in a development process that works according to the off-shoring model. In relation to the localisation of usability evaluation we explore research relating to different approaches in a number of cultures and context and present a model providing summary guidance for method selection in differing countries / cultures.
Ever since the agile manifesto was created in 2001, the research community has devoted a great deal of attention to agile software development. This article examines publications and citations to illustrate how the research on agile has progressed in the 10 years following the articulation of the manifesto. Specifically, we delineate the conceptual structure underlying agile scholarship by performing an analysis of authors who have made notable contributions to the field. Further, we summarize prior research and introduce contributions in this special issue on agile software development. We conclude by discussing directions for future research and urging agile researchers to embrace a theory-based approach in their scholarship.
Software development paradigms are shifting. The development group's "team" ability, and the effects of the individual developer, become more important as organizations recognize that the traditional approach of increasing process pressure and overworking team members is not getting the job done. The pioneers of Agile methodologies question the preconceived processes within which development teams work. Rather than adding to the burden of the individual developer, Agile asks "how can we change the process so that the team is more productive, while also improving quality?" The answer is in learning to play the "game." Written for developers and project managers, Agile Software Development compares software development to a game. Team members play the game knowing that the ultimate goal is to win---always remembering what they have learned along the way, and always keeping in mind that they will never play the same way twice. Players must keep an open mind to different methodologies, and focus on the goal of developing quality software in a short cycle time.
ISO 9241-11 and ISO 13407 are two important standards related to usability: the former one provides the definition of usability and the latter one guidance for designing usability. We carried out an interpretative analysis of ISO 13407 from the viewpoint of the standard definition of usability from ISO 9241-11. The results show that ISO 13407 provides only partly guidance for designing usability as presumed by the definition. Guidance for describing users and environments are provided but very limited guidance is provided for the descriptions of user goals and usability measures, and generally for the process of producing the various outcomes.
To survive in today’s competitive software market, software developers must maintain contact with their customers and users
and adopt a flexible organization which allows response to feedback and the changing requirements from the use-context. This
also requires a software development that enables change proposals and error reports to be acted upon quickly. The present
article uses a case study of a flexible development practice which so far has proved to be sustainable and successful to reconsider
user involvement and software development practices of small software providers from an agile perspective. Implementing an
agile process may allow for competitive flexibility without necessarily jeopardizing quality.
KeywordsAgile software development-user participation-qualitative methods
This paper presents the results of a systematic review of existing literature on the integration of agile software development with user-centered design approaches. It shows that a common process model underlies such approaches and discusses which artifacts are used to support the collaboration between designers and developers.
While software is so important for all facets of the modern world, software development itself is not a perfect process. Agile software engineering methods have recently emerged as a new and different way of developing software as compared to the traditional methodologies. However, their success has mostly been anecdotal, and research in this subject is still scant in the academic circles. This research study was a survey study on the critical success factors of Agile software development projects using quantitative approach.Based on existing literature, a preliminary list of potential critical success factors of Agile projects were identified and compiled. Subsequently, reliability analysis and factor analysis were conducted to consolidate this preliminary list into a final set of 12 possible critical success factors for each of the four project success categories – Quality, Scope, Time, and Cost.A survey was conducted among Agile professionals, gathering survey data from 109 Agile projects from 25 countries across the world. Multiple regression techniques were used, both at the full regression model and at the optimized regression model via the stepwise screening procedure. The results revealed that only 10 out of 48 hypotheses were supported, identifying three critical success factors for Agile software development projects: (a) Delivery Strategy, (b) Agile Software Engineering Techniques, and (c) Team Capability.Limitations of the study are discussed together with interpretations for practitioners. To ensure success of their projects, managers are urged to focus on choosing a high-caliber team, practicing Agile engineering techniques and following Agile-style delivery strategy.
Agile software development represents a major departure from traditional, plan-based approaches to software engineering. A systematic review of empirical studies of agile software development up to and including 2005 was conducted. The search strategy identified 1996 studies, of which 36 were identified as empirical studies. The studies were grouped into four themes: introduction and adoption, human and social factors, perceptions on agile methods, and comparative studies. The review investigates what is currently known about the benefits and limitations of, and the strength of evidence for, agile methods. Implications for research and practice are presented. The main implication for research is a need for more and better empirical studies of agile software development within a common research agenda. For the industrial readership, the review provides a map of findings, according to topic, that can be compared for relevance to their own settings and situations.
We would like to express our sincere appreciation to all those who have contributed, directly or indirectly, to this work in form of technical or other support. In particular we would like to thank Markus D?chting for his assistance. A special thank to Lennart Gr?tzbach always helping us to find the right words. We would like to thank Thomas Geis and Jan Gulliksen for the fruitful and intensive discussions and the helpful input. We also like to thank the remaining interview partners for their help and efforts.
This article reviews current efforts in bridging the gaps between software engineering and Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) and describes some critical issues that must be resolved in order to reconcile some of the differences between the two fields. We argue that user-centered systems design (UCSD) must be tightly integrated in the software development process and suggest the usability design process as a way of doing this. The usability design process is a UCSD approach for developing usable interactive systems, combining usability engineering with interaction design, and emphasizing extensive active user involvement throughout the iterative process. We outline the usability design process and illustrate the steps in the process with examples from real-life design cases. Finally, we provide an example of how the usability design process can be implemented in a commercial software-development process, Rational Unified Process™ (RUP). Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
This article reports on three case studies, each examining a user experience specialist working on their first agile team. Based on these real-world examples, this article answers how user experience fits with an agile process in terms of user research, UI/UX design, and usability evaluation. Self-reports of UX specialists’ satisfaction and effectiveness are reported. -- Paul McInerney
The development of methods tools and process improvements is best to be based on the understanding of the development practice
to be supported. Qualitative research has been proposed as a method for understanding the social and cooperative aspects of
software development. However, qualitative research is not easily combined with the improvement orientation of an engineering
discipline. During the last 6 years, we have applied an approach we call ‘cooperative method development’, which combines
qualitative social science fieldwork, with problem-oriented method, technique and process improvement. The action research
based approach focusing on shop floor software development practices allows an understanding of how contextual contingencies
influence the deployment and applicability of methods, processes and techniques. This article summarizes the experiences and
discusses the further development of this approach based on several research projects in cooperation with industrial partners.
User involvement is a widely accepted principle in development of usable systems. However, it is a vague concept covering many approaches. This study first clarifies the nature of user involvement and its expected benefits, and secondly reviews three streams of research, to evaluate the benefits and problems of varied user involvement approaches in practice. The particular focus of this study is on the early activities in the development process. An analysis of the literature suggests that user involvement has generally positive effects, especially on user satisfaction, and some evidence exists to suggest that taking users as a primary information source is an effective means of requirements capture. However, the role of users must be carefully considered and more cost-efficient practices are needed for gathering users' implicit needs and requirements in real product development contexts.
Due to a number of similarities between user-centred design (UCD) and agile development, coupled with an appreciation that developers are rarely usability experts, it seems attractive to integrate these two approaches. However, although agile methods share some of the same aims as UCD, there are also distinct differences. These differences have made the use of these methods on development projects problematic. This paper reports a field study designed to investigate the use of agile methods alongside UCD in one particular organization. The aim of the study was to develop a framework for use by project teams wishing to integrate UCD practices with agile development. The study, its findings and five principles for integrating UCD and agile development arising from this work are discussed.
The original publication is available at http://www.springer.com/ To survive in todays competitive software market, software developers must maintain contact with their customers and users and adopt a flexible organization which allows response to feedback and the changing requirements from the use-context. This also requires a software development that enables change proposals and error reports to be acted upon quickly. The present article uses a case study of a flexible development practice which so far has proved to be sustainable and successful to reconsider user involvement and software development practices of small software providers from an agile perspective. Implementing an agile process may allow for competitive flexibility without necessarily jeopardizing quality.
Communities all over the world have established their own value systems which do not necessarily correlate with the intrinsic values of technology. The account of internationalization and localization of information technology reveals that an abstraction of the receiving societies’ culture leads to the design of unusable and unwanted socio-technical systems. Cross-cultural research extrapolates major challenges of current development practices. Longtime established methods, understandings of quality concepts, and metrics of socio-technical systems can no longer be assumed to be universals. Thus the author argues that as much as the design of socio-technical systems has to be synchronized with the target community so does the design and evaluation process itself as well as the underlying quality concepts. Empirical research in the design of information and decision support systems in the Namibian context demonstrates the need for a change of paradigm in socio-technical system design and supports the presented culture-driven design framework.
ICT Interventions at agriculture information service provide rural farmer with the knowledge to improve their wellbeing. There are various technological and operational components that go into design of a software system particularly in ICT for development initiatives. We aimed to design method that covers socio-technical issues via participatory design.
User participation and involvement in software development are considered to be essential for a successful software system. Three research areas, human aspects of software engineering, requirements engineering, and information systems, study these topics from various perspectives. We think it is important to analyze user participation and involvement in software engineering comprehensively to encourage further research in this area. We investigate the evidence on effects of user participation and involvement on system success and we explore which methods are available in literature. A systematic mapping study was conducted. The systematic search yielded 3,698 hits, from which we identified 289 unique papers. These papers were reviewed by the first author based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. The second author validated the selection of papers by reviewing the reasons for exclusion and inclusion and the corresponding papers on a sample base. 58 of the 289 papers were selected (22 statistical survey and meta-study papers and 36 methods papers). Based on the empirical evidence of the surveys and meta-studies, we developed a meta-analysis of structural equation models. This overview demonstrates that most papers showed positive correlations between aspects of development processes (including user participation) and human aspects (including user involvement) and system success. The analysis of the proposed solutions from the method papers revealed a wide variety of user participation and involvement practices for most activities within software development.
An analysis of rural information communication and technology (ICT) case studies suggests that there are a number of constraints which threaten the sustainability of rural ICT projects. Sustainability is key to the effectiveness of a rural ICT project. The categories of sustainability reveal critical success factors (CSFs) that need to be considered in the implementation and the management of rural ICT projects. The project management discipline recognizes the complexity of a project's environment and therefore suggests that projects be undertaken in phases comprising the project life cycle. Project management practice for rural ICT project sustainability is examined with the intent of adapting the traditional project life cycle to propose a rural ICT project life cycle (RICT-PLC) that is sensitive to the CSFs of sustainability. In order to further investigate the phases and the related practices throughout the life cycle of a rural ICT project, two case study investigations are explored in the Eastern Cape, South Africa: the Dwesa ICT project and the Rhodes University Mathematics Education Project. Finally, an initially enhanced RICT-PLC model is developed, that sets sustainability guidelines for ICT project management in rural areas and identifies the people, environments, technologies, systems, and requirements for ICTs to support rural development activities. Narcyz Roztocki and H. Roland Weistroffer are the accepting Guest Editors for this article. View all notes
As a reaction to the complexity and rigor of commercial software development processes, “agile” software development methods
have gained increasing attention. Agile methods prioritize delivering working software over producing extensive models and
documentation. Agile processes focus on the people involved and the required interaction instead of on processes and tools.
Furthermore, it emphasizes that responding to the changes that invariably take place over the course of a project is more
important than strictly adhering to a contract or plan. From the perspective of usability and user-centered design, however,
agile methods do not inherently provide the required support to the development process. This being said, the agile philosophy
does not prevent focusing on usability during the design process: in fact, the agile and user-centered approaches have the
potential to work very well together. This chapter intends to describe the core principles of agile development and investigate
to what extent usability-enhancing activities can be supported within the agile approaches. As a conclusion, it will outline
a model for integrating agile development and user-centered design.
Agile software development (ASD) is an emerging approach in software engineering, initially advocated by a group of 17 software professionals who practice a set of “lightweight” methods, and share a common set of values of software development. In this paper, we advance the state-of-the-art of the research in this area by conducting a survey-based ex-post-facto study for identifying factors from the perspective of the ASD practitioners that will influence the success of projects that adopt ASD practices. In this paper, we describe a hypothetical success factors framework we developed to address our research question, the hypotheses we conjectured, the research methodology, the data analysis techniques we used to validate the hypotheses, and the results we obtained from data analysis. The study was conducted using an unprecedentedly large-scale survey-based methodology, consisting of respondents who practice ASD and who had experience practicing plan-driven software development in the past. The study indicates that nine of the 14 hypothesized factors have statistically significant relationship with “Success”. The important success factors that were found are: customer satisfaction, customer collaboration, customer commitment, decision time, corporate culture, control, personal characteristics, societal culture, and training and learning.
This study tries to shed some light on what happens to usability and occupational health issues in a bespoke software development project. Usability is an essential quality in software, in particular in a work context where poor usability and other risk factors related to the software and computers may cause health problems. We have interviewed a number of software developers, usability people and users about their attitudes to and practices for integrating usability and users' health concerns in software development. The interviews were conducted in two Swedish organisations with in-house development of bespoke software. Our main conclusion is that several factors combine to push usability and occupational health matters aside, some of which are attitudes to usability and users' health issues, unclear responsibilities, poor support for user-centeredness and usability in software development models, ineffective user participation and usability and users' health being ignored or forgotten in decisions about the software, its use and its design.
In contrast to the more usual approach, we focus on the internal configuration of the design process. Using the concepts of type and typification as applied to design reasoning, we present an account of reasoning about ‘the user’ in design. Our analysis shows users are spoken of in many different yet systematically related ways. This structure of usage is shared by designers and taken for granted in their work practices. It forms one of the resources designers use to construct their design worlds.
Usability is still a problem for software development. As the introduced software changes the use context, use qualities cannot be fully anticipated. Close co-operation between users and developers during development has been proposed as a remedy. Others fear such involvement of users as it might jeopardize planning and control. Based on the observation of an industrial project, we show how user participation and control can be achieved at the same time. The present article discusses the specific measures that allowed for co-operation between users and developers in an industrial context. It indicates measures to improve software development by focusing on use-orientation, i.e. allowing for user–developer co-operation.
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UCD in Agile Projects: Dream Team or Odd Couple?
- P Mcinerney
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McInerney, P. and Maurer, F. 2005. UCD in Agile Projects:
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Reflective Steps: A Collaborative Learning Oriented Approach to Software Development and Process Improvement
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Oriented Approach to Software Development and Process
Improvement. Doctoral Thesis. Universität Hamburg.
A Framework for Integrating Software Usability Into Software Development Process
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Dino, H. 2012. A Framework for Integrating Software
Usability Into Software Development Process. Masters
Thesis, HiLCoE School of Computer Science & Technology.
A systematic literature review for agile development processes and user centered design integration
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Salah, D, Paige, R, and Cairns, P. 2014. A systematic
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A decade of agile methodologies: Towards explaining agile software development
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